Collaborations

Scientific Production

Summary:
1) The interstellar organic chemistry and the origins of life
Following the idea that the main building blocks of life could have been brought on Earth from the interstellar medium (panspermy theory), we are willing to understand which kind of organic molecules are present in space, why, and what could be the relationship between them and prebiotically relevant compounds. In particular, we are interested in cyanopolyynes (H-(C≡C)n-CN) and derivatives. We recently published new syntheses of cyanobutadiyne and methylcyanobutadiyne (Chem. Eur. J. 2013). We also perform photolyses experiments in the gas phase in order to understand how these molecules could be formed in the interstellar medium, and experiments in condensed phase to examine their reactivity.
In order to synthesize the following members of this family, we synthesized the bromocyanobutadiyne (Br-C≡C-C≡C-CN) and reacted it with terminal acetylenes. Contrary to what was anticipated, the corresponding cyanopolyynes were not obtained but other complex molecules were isolated, following an unprecedented mechanism (Chem. Eur. J. 2015).
2) The reactivity of ynamides with tetracyanoethylene
We recently showed that a certain number of ynamides reacted very well with tetracyanoethylene to give 1,1,4,4-tetracyanobutadienes (TCBDs) in high yields, following a sequence of [2+2]cycloaddition-[2+2]retroelectrocyclization (Chem. Eur. J. 2014). In the future, we are willing to integrate these TCBDs in new electronic devices.